COOLING A WARMING LAGOS: LESSONS FROM MY PARTICIPATION AT THE GLOBAL COOLING PLEDGE ASSEMBLY, SINGAPORE.

 

When UNEP calls, you answer, and that is what I did. Although I missed last year’s inaugural assembly in Germany, I was delighted to join representatives from over 60 countries to address the pressing issue of rising global temperatures— a challenge that directly impacts us here in Lagos.

Lagos faces a steadily intensifying heat crisis. Whether it is enduring the oppressive afternoon heat in Surulere, watching vulnerable residents struggle through heatwaves in Mushin, or managing steep electricity costs just to power a single air conditioner, effective cooling has become a necessity, not a luxury.  It is survival. Yet cooling itself presents a critical paradox: inefficient air conditioners and high-Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants contribute to global warming even as they provide indoor relief. This challenge brought me to Singapore for the Global Cooling Pledge Assembly, where signatories—spanning governments, municipalities, industry leaders, and development finance institutions—gathered to advance sustainable cooling solutions. Sitting in the halls of the Park Royal on Beach Road among representatives from over 80 countries, a single thought stayed with me: Lagos truly belongs in this room.

Lagos is a city that understands heat. Every day, millions of people move through its streets, markets, offices, schools, construction sites, and waterfront communities under increasingly challenging temperature conditions. The heat is no longer simply a matter of discomfort. It is becoming a question of public health, productivity, infrastructure, energy consumption, urban planning and quality of life.

Why Urban Heat Is Lagos's Silent Crisis

The Global Cooling Pledge asks the world to cut cooling-related emissions by at least 68% from 2022 levels by 2050, while rapidly expanding access to sustainable cooling. That dual mandate — cool more, emit less — directly reflects the reality in Lagos. Our city of over 20 million faces brutal heat and humidity, frequent grid failures, and a building boom largely designed without heat in mind. Cooling demand across Africa is set to explode in the coming decades, and if Lagos meets that demand the way wealthier cities did — with inefficient equipment and high-global-warming-potential refrigerants — we will lock ourselves into a vicious cycle of emissions, blackouts and unbearable heat.

 

What Singapore Taught Me

Singapore: A City That Plans for Heat

Singapore and Lagos are different, with different governance structures, economies, land-use patterns and development histories. Yet they share an important characteristic: both are tropical, densely populated, and exposed to heat and humidity. What stood out for me during the visit was that Singapore's response to its tropical climate is not based on one intervention. It is a system of interventions. Urban planning, greenery, building design, transport, water management, public spaces, research and technology are brought together to improve the urban environment.

This city-state has made cooling central to its urban DNA — and much of it is passive. During the Assembly's Beat the Heat training, Implementation roundtable, and Beat the Heat study tours, I walked through neighbourhoods where tree canopies, shaded walkways, cool roofs, cross-ventilated building design, and district cooling systems work together so that mechanical air conditioning is the last resort, not the first.

 

The lesson landed hard: the cheapest, cleanest air conditioner is the one you never have to switch on. Lagos doesn't need to copy Singapore's skyline — it needs to copy its thinking;

· Shade and green first. Trees, parks, and reflective ("cool") roofs can lower street-level temperatures dramatically at a fraction of the cost of new generation capacity.

· Design for the tropics. Our building codes should treat natural ventilation and insulation as essentials, not afterthoughts.

· Efficiency is infrastructure. Raising minimum energy performance standards — as Ghana is already doing through the Cool Coalition's EcoFridges initiative. — means every naira spent on electricity goes further.

· Refrigerants matter. Phasing down HFCs in line with the Kigali Amendment isn't abstract policy; it's about what gas sits inside the AC unit in a Lagos pharmacy or the freezer in a Mile 12 cold store.

 

Bringing It Home to Lagos

I left Singapore with a conviction that Lagos — and Nigeria more broadly — should not just be a signatory voice in this movement, not just a beneficiary of it. But a player in the act of reducing urban heat. The path to this for Lagos is simple. We must:

1. Develop a Lagos Urban Heat Plan. Map heat hotspots, plant shade trees along transit corridors, mandate cool roofs on public buildings, and retrofit schools and markets first.

2. Strong appliance standards.  Partnering with national regulatory agencies is essential to prevent inefficient, secondhand cooling equipment from entering our market and becoming a long-term liability.

3. Implement cool chains for food and vaccines. Investing in sustainable cold chain infrastructure will minimise post-harvest loss for Nigerian farmers while safeguarding vital vaccine supplies from temperature spoilage

4. Develop Skills. We must partner with international organisations to train technicians to install and maintain the next generation of low-emission cooling—a jobs agenda as much as a climate one.

 

While temperatures in Lagos continue to rise, the insights gained in Singapore demonstrate that sustainable, equitable cooling is well within reach. Primary among these lessons is the strategic role of urban vegetation. Rather than treating trees as decorative elements, Singapore integrates them as essential environmental infrastructure—mitigating surface temperatures, enhancing pedestrian corridors, boosting biodiversity, and cultivating healthier urban ecosystems.

For Lagos, this should encourage us to rethink the role of trees. A tree along a pedestrian corridor is not simply a tree; it can be public-health infrastructure. A shaded bus stop is not simply a transport facility; it can be heat-protection infrastructure.

Urban parks serve a purpose far beyond recreation; they are vital climate-resilience infrastructure. To maximise their impact, Lagos requires a strategic urban greening program that extends past basic tree planting. We must map our city's primary heat islands and systematically deploy trees and nature-based solutions to the neighbourhoods facing the greatest thermal risk."

 

My appreciation goes to the UNEP team, the people and government of Singapore for the wonderful hospitality. To all who participated in the assembly, let's keep the promise and put in all our efforts to cool the earth.